[In the spirit of Earth Day this week, I'm going to brainstorm some ideas for games with an ecological or natural theme. Imagine these games printed on 100% recycled chipboard. Also see my post on sustainable game components.]  

And now we come to the last in this series. Hope you've enjoyed this idle brainstorming this week. Half the fun of this exploration has been figuring out mechanics for non-combat, non-colonial themed games. It was in that "non-colonial" direction that I started considering the opposite of colonization: Evacuation.

You know me, I'm a big supporter of getting off the rock. The notion of a massive planetary evacuation was a very tempting idea. This has the ingredients of a very interesting big box board game, too.

First, start with a basic world map and divide it up into distinct regions. Does this need to be countries as in RISK? Cities, as in PANDEMIC? Not sure, but there is some serious juice in literally playing on a world stage. All it needs is a sense of urgency, like an existential threat... like a meteor.

A rough mockup of the world board and the countdown tracker.

Thus, we have a story. A meteor is on a collision course with Earth. It will arrive in seven years. Let's say each round represents one year. Each round, the marker (a meteor token) moves inexorably closer and closer towards earth. The game continues until the meteor hits Earth. The player who gets all her meeples off the board wins. Seems like a simple enough core for a game.

If this is an evacuation game, it makes sense to have some mechaphor about removing meeples from the board – a worker removal game. There are a few games already in this genre, most notably Forbidden Island and Survive! Escape from Atlantis. Both those games have a very narrow scope, focusing on a handful of individual escapees. This game would expand that scope over a larger space and time.

Each player a has limited number of meeples, representing international teams of specialists performing different tasks. The game begins with each player takes turns placing meeples on spaces of the board. During each round, players take turns moving their meeples from one space to another. Leaving a space triggers a special action based on the space being left, usually harvesting limited resources, "hiring" more meeples, or building special infrastructure.

The ultimate goal is to build a Spaceport. The spaceport has only one special action: "Remove this meeple from this space to remove it from the board." The goal of the game is to evacuate all your meeples from the board via a Spaceport. Bear in mind that over the course of play, you might create many, many meeples to help you build the spaceport.

If you get all your meeples off the board, you win. If the meteor hits Earth and no one evacuates all their meeples, then the player who evacuated the most meeples wins. There might be alternate paths to victory, too, like lasers to push away the meteor for a round or bunkers that allow meeples to survive on Earth at the end of the game.

[In the spirit of Earth Day this week, I'm going to brainstorm some ideas for games with an ecological or natural theme. Imagine these games printed on 100% recycled chipboard. Also see my post on sustainable game components.] 

I read a story once about counterfeit wine bottles. Some unwitting collectors will buy these fakes without realizing it. The funny thing is that the bottles are worth more when you're not certain that they're fake. So, collectors keep these and/or sell these suspected forgeries, all the while never knowing if they're legit. It's like "Schrödinger's Cabernet."

There has to be a game here. Maybe an auction game? Let's explore.

Assume there is a deck of double-sided cards, or "bottles." The "back" of the card shows a vineyard and the estimated value of wines from that vineyard. The "front" of the card shows the value of that specific bottle, which may be much higher or lower than the estimate.

BLECH VINEYARD [6 Bottles. Estimated Value: $2.]
[$1] [$1] [$1] [$2] [$3] [$4]

QUIET VINEYARD [9 Bottles. Estimated Value: $3]
[$1] [$2] [$2] [$2] [$2] [$2] [$3] [$6] [$7]

STABLE VINEYARD [9 Bottles. Estimated Value: $4]
[$1] [$1] [$2] [$3] [$4] [$4] [$5] [$6] [$10]

GOLD VINEYARD [6 Bottles. Estimated Value: $5]
[$2] [$2] [$3] [$5] [$7] [$11]

WILD VINEYARD [6 Bottles. 3M/2S/1P. Estimated Value: $6]
[$0] [$0] [$0] [$12] [$12] [$12]

There are also four available roles. Each role rewards you for collecting particular types of wines.

BLECH COLLECTOR - Score 6 points if you have the most BLECH cards in your collection.
QUIET COLLECTOR - Score 5 points if you have the most QUIET cards in your collection.
STABLE COLLECTOR - Score 4 points if you have the most STABLE cards in your collection.
GOLD COLLECTOR - Score 3 points if you have the most GOLD cards in your collection.


SETUP
2-4 Players

Choose a player to get the "first player" token.

Deal a role card to each player.

Each player begins with a $20 in poker chips. Keep a general supply available for the rest of the game.

Taking turns, each player draws three cards from the top of the deck and keeps two. The unselected card goes to the top of the deck.

Remove one card from the deck for each player. These cards will not be used in this game.

Shuffle the remaining deck and place it in the center of the table.


TURN SUMMARY
Each turn has five phases.
1. Each player may offer a card for auction.
2. Each player may spend $2 to appraise an available card.
3. Each player may bid on an available card (including the top card of the deck).
4. Each player may open a bottle by revealing a card in their collection.
5. End of turn. If the top card is unsold, discard it. Pass the first player token to the left.


1. Offer (Optional)
You may take a card from your collection and put it up for auction by pushing it forward. It is now available for purchase in the auction. For each player without cards up for auction, add one card to the market. Then, draw one extra card and add it to the auction. In the end, there should be one card per player, plus one. So, in a two-player game, there will be three cards up for auction. In a three-player game, four cards. In a four-player game, five cards.

2. Appraise (Optional)
You may "appraise" one bottle that is up for auction. When you appraise a bottle, look at the front of that chosen card and put it back down without revealing it to anyone else. If you appraise a bottle, pay $2 to the general supply.

3. Bid
Taking turns, each player bids at least $0 for one card that is up for auction. The next player may do the same, and so on. On your turn, if someone has placed a higher bid on your card, you may place a new higher bid on that same card or you may offer a bid on another card. In the end, each player should have one bid on one card. The highest bidder for each card takes that card into her collection.

If you bought another player's card, pay that player. If you bought a card from the deck, your spent money goes to the general supply.

The unchosen card is discarded for the rest of the game. If that card belonged to you, you get paid that card’s shown value from the general supply.

4. Reveal (Optional)
You can also earn money by "opening a bottle." Choose one card in your collection. Reveal its front. You may collect the money indicated from the general supply. Keep that card in your collection, face up. It is still in play and may still be auctioned at a later point.

5. End of Turn
The first player token passes to the player on the left. The game ends when the deck runs out of cards. Complete the rest of that turn and proceed to scoring.


SCORING
You score one point for the total value of your collection as it is currently visible. So, yes, you could score more points than a card is actually worth. You might also score fewer points than a card is actually worth. That's the risk of wine collecting!

In addition, score one point for every $3 in your supply and score points from your role card.

The player with the highest score wins!

[In the spirit of Earth Day this week, I'm going to brainstorm some ideas for games with an ecological or natural theme. Imagine these games printed on 100% recycled chipboard. Also see my post on sustainable game components.]

Let's take this "Earth Day" theme to the distant cosmic past, when Earth and planets were still coalescing around our sun. In this game, you and the other players gather stardust to create asteroids, planetoids, and other stellar bodies.


The game is comprised of the board shown above and a block of 36 dice. You can play with 2-4 players.

On your turn, roll a die. Place it on an unoccupied space on the board. You may not place a die in the center space.

Collapsing: If you create a contiguous adjacent group of three or more dice with matching results, remove all the dice in that group except the die you just placed. Raise that remaining die's result by one. So, if you make a group of 1s, the remaining die is now 2. If you make a group of 2s, the remaining die is 3. No die may be higher than 6.

Chain Collapse: If the remaining die creates a new contiguous group of three or more matching dice, remove the second group as well. The remaining die is raised yet again, by one increment.

Score: You score points for collapsing groups of dice. Your score is (number of dice in the group) + (value of dice in the group) + (number of bonus dots the group occupied). For example, if you made a group of three 1s with one die occupying a 3-dot space, you'd earn 7 points. (3 + 1 + 3)

The first player to earn 25 points wins. That's a very arbitrary number. If you playtest this game and decide it should be higher, I'm happy to hear your suggestions in the comments!